Bone Sliding

Bone Sliding is a novel about fathers and sons and what happens between birth and death and birth again. That’s quite a lot of territory. And there’s also some epiphanies thrown in. Which leads to even more territory. You know, epiphanies are not simple things. They are not always silent and subtle and easily missed. Sometimes they are brilliant and obvious and they completely change your life and your attitudes and you still don’t see them. Not for what they are. If we were to be honest with ourselves, painfully honest, the universe often has its work cut out for it. With some of us, that is, in the epiphany department. Even when desperate, we are stubbornly nonabsorbent, even when soaked, or even drowned in useful truths, we just don’t get it. It takes a lot to get our attention.

Take for example: Paul.

What if you weren’t comfortable in your own skin?
What if you weren’t comfortable in someone else’s skin either?
That wouldn’t leave you with a lot of choices, would it?
Paul Olsen isn’t comfortable
But he has no cause to be that way.
At least that’s what everyone keeps telling him.
He has everything a teenager could want. A large, happy family. Plenty to eat. A decent home. Friends. Best friends. A girlfriend even. Camping trips. Beer. Heck, Paul has had a Norman Rockwell, Northern Minnesota, All-American childhood in the 1930’s when such childhoods weren’t just possible, they were probable, and yet still Paul is not satisfied. What’s wrong with him? There’s a Depression and a War on, sure, but what does Paul have to complain about?
Maybe the nagging suspicion that the Universe has him switching bodies when he least expects it?
But, c’mon guys! Who expects body-switching ? In rural Minnesota?
Flesh sliding onto bones, new bones, not the right bones, well, it’s a problem. Yes it is. And it’s Paul’s problem.